Posts Tagged ‘adoption’

In my thirty years as a pregnancy counselor at adoption agencies, I met many women who had been forced (by social convention, by family members, by partners) to place their babies for adoption. Because of their stories, I developed a renewed support for keeping abortion a legal option for women.

Before Roe V Wade came along there were maternity homes, and a general attitude of forget-this-happened-you’ll-have-other-babies-who-will-take-his-place. (For a great read about those days, see The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler. )

My own interactions with birth mothers from the years before Roe V Wade:

1. One day in about 1981, a hesitant voice on the phone said: “Ten years ago I gave up a baby for adoption through this agency . . .” When she didn’t continue I said, “Yes, how can I help you?” “You mean you’re going to talk to me? I expected you to slam the phone down!” Tears of relief flowed as she realized she was going to be listened to.

2. A woman who called from Florida on her child’s 21st birthday, said that she didn’t know if she’d had a boy or a girl, so she and her family always spoke of “the baby.” “It feels weird to say ‘The Baby’ turns 21 today,” she said. I asked her if she would like to know the first name of that baby, and she was amazed that I offered to tell her. I took her phone number, looked up the information and called her back to let her know it was Linda who turned 21 that day. “You don’t know what a gift you’ve given me!” she said.

3. About six years later a woman called and said that fourteen years earlier she had placed a baby for adoption through the agency. The day she signed papers, when he was only three days old, her worker told her they didn’t have a family for her baby because he was mixed race. “I’ve never forgotten him and I have worked hard to better myself, and if my child is still in foster care, I could take him back now.” I was startled; for one thing, it wouldn’t be that easy, but I wanted to give her some information. I took her phone number and went to the files. Her baby had been placed in a loving adoptive home the next day after she signed relinquishments, but no one had told her this. I called and apologized profusely for the lack of courtesy that she had been subjected to. “I thank you for letting me know that he has a good home,” came her response. I invited the birth mother to write a letter to be placed in the file in case her child contacted the agency. I don’t know if she did, or if he did, but I hope so.

As soon as Roe v Wade was announced in January of 1973, the adoption rate dropped dramatically. If they opted not to terminate the pregnancy but to give their child life, these pregnant women were faced with another decision: whether to raise the child or to make an adoption plan. None of their options was easy to take, but being in control of their lives and their bodies, made a difference to their psyche. They had an active role: to choose their outcome. And having the power to make the choice made all the difference in the world about their feelings when they chose adoption!

And that’s why I don’t want to return to the days when abortion was an illegal and criminal act and adoption felt like a punishment to mother and child.

I was driving home from my office yesterday when I heard news of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. I made a beeline to the computer as soon as I got in the house, to check with my FB friends Lena and Bob, who are in the process of adopting two little boys from an orphanage in Haiti. Sure enough, Lena was online asking for prayers for her boys and their country. I checked back periodically through the evening hours, as they put together an impromptu prayer meeting at their house, posted links to early online postings from Haiti (one in French), and posts from other waiting adoptive parents they’ve met.

Finally, at 11:02 PM, a msg from a Haitian missionary :
UPDATE: Just got back from upper Delmas area – Abbey and the children from 3 Angels are all fine St. Joseph’s home for boys is demolished but the boys got out safely.

All day today I’ve thought of other connections to Haiti in my life:

The daughter of my best friend’s sister went to Haiti twenty years ago, as a twenty year old college student. She was doing missionary work there when she was killed in an automobile accident. Life has been very hard on her family, after the senseless loss of their firstborn.

Then I think of children from Haiti who have been adopted by friends and families of friends: I thought of Stephanie, of Jemellie, of Kenson and Kenley, Haitian brothers I knew in foster care. How are these young people, all adults now, feeling today? Are they thinking of their homeland and wishing they could help?

In reality we are a small Universe, and we all share passage on this Planet’s Journey. It is right to be concerned for our fellow passengers. Times are tight, but we’ll all feel better when we reach out a hand to help. Suggestion for donations: http://www.ThreeAngelsRelief.org

It is my intent to blog about adoption from the viewpoint of the adoption professional. After almost 30 years in infant adoptions, mostly in Arizona, I have observed many changes in the adoption community. The bulk of my experience has been in working with birth parents: women and their partners who have placed infants and toddlers for adoption through private adoption agencies.

When I began to work in adoption in 1979 in Tucson, I realized it was a field in which I was not well versed. There are no ‘adoption classes’ taught in any formal learning environments, i.e., grad schools of social work or counseling. Many people who come to adoption as a profession are participants: people who have adopted a child or adopted persons all grown up, who have a desire to help others in a field close to their hearts. Fewer professionals are birth parents because it is still hard to admit one’s role as birth parent; therefore many birth parents are still ‘in the closet.” However, the movement toward open adoption has brought the cleanser of sunshine to adoption, and with it, a lessening of the stigma of being a birth parent.

So in 1979 I went to the Tucson library to check out books on adoption; there were three: Orphan Voyage, The Adoption Triangle and Shared Fate. Today, there are LOTS of books on adoption. Most of them are written to the audience of adoptive parents (how-to books, mostly) and adoptees (picture books for children to help them understand adoption, and search-for-self for adult adoptees who wonder about searching for the original parents who are by-and-large unknown to them). Fewer books are available for birth parents. That is the area that I intend to address, over the next few months, in this blog. But first, a little more about how I got here.

Orphan Voyage was written in the 1950s. The author, (as I recall; this book is out of print now) was the wife of an adoptee who wanted to talk to other adoptees, but in the fifties adoption was a shameful topic seldom discussed. The author put ads in big city newspapers inviting contact from individuals who were adopted, to tell their stories of growing up adopted. Many people had not been told they were adopted and only learned after the death of their parents, or were told but in a negative way and cautioned by their parents to keep it a secret. Adoptees who had told their friends were ridiculed and socially exiled. I experienced a flash back to a childhood memory.

Two new kids who rode the school bus from our country community were living with their grandmother because their daddy, a soldier, had been sent overseas and their mother had to work full time. Diana was my age; we were in the same second grade classroom. Her brother Donnie was in first grade. One day I overheard my mother exclaiming to my dad that an older ‘busybody’ neighbor had cornered Diana and asked her if her grandmother with whom she lived ‘treated her the same as her brother.’ She wondered because, after all, her daddy (the grandmother’s son) wasn’t really her daddy, like he was the daddy of her brother, and she was just wondering if her dad and his mother treated her as if she was loved the same way that Donnie was loved. Diana’s grandmother had been in tears as she told my mother what the busybody had said: that Diana was adopted and this raised the question of ‘equal love.’

The Adoption Triangle was written in 1961 and is a ground-breaking and still-revered book about adoption. Written by Reuben Panner and Annette Baran, two social workers from Vista del Mar, an adoption agency in the Los Angeles area, brought to the fore the issue of sealed records and the adoptee’s right to information about who they are and where they come from. That edition that I checked out of the library identified Arizona as an “open records state” which meant that the original birth certificate was available to an adoptee when he/she reached majority. I hadn’t worked in adoptions long, but I knew that Arizona was no longer (by 1979) an open records state. What I learned was that the law had been changed and applied retroactively, because in just a few years we started getting calls from adoptive parents who had been telling their children “when you turn 18 we’ll get your original birth certificate and we’ll find her to get answers to your questions.” These adoptive parents felt they had been lied to, and passed that lie on to their children because the lawmakers closed the records that they felt their children had a right to.

Shared Fate by H David Kirk read as if it was a doctoral dissertation (perhaps it was) written by an adoptive father who worked to help his children and other adoptees and adoptive parents to see their lives as interwoven, with the suggestion that the adoptive parent should help the adoptee understand Self. He went on to write other books on adoption.

It is my belief that people learn a lot from books, and that the current market of self-published and small press books have brought an awareness of adoption issues. However, unlike when there were fewer books, it’s seldom these days that a book on adoption is advertised. There are websites like Tapestry Books and Perspectives Press and EMK Press that showcase books in this niche market. In each upcoming blog I will discuss books on adoption.